In her mid-30s, Emmy-winning American journalist Robin Allison Davis moved to Paris with a dreamy, amorphous hope that this change of location would inject a little verve, a little je ne sais quoi, into her life. Two years in, in 2018, she finally landed her first official job contract. And less than one month after starting, she got a breast cancer diagnosis.
The next three years–which she recounts in her first book Surviving Paris: A Memoir of Healing in the City of Light–she navigates the French medical system through two rounds of cancer, countless surgeries, egg freezing, chemotherapy, radiation, and other treatments.
Her memoir is honest about so many parts of facing cancer in your thirties. She writes about navigating dating after treatment (as she puts it: “dating with one boob”). She writes about her parents, loneliness, incredibly long walks, joy-restoring dresses. She writes candidly about friendships– the bolstering, spirit-reviving ones and the totally break-your-heart horrible ones.
Below, Robin speaks to Jadey about her experience as an American in Paris.
Q:
I wanted to start by talking about navigating the workplace with cancer. You write about keeping your diagnosis a secret; I was also a little secretive about my cancer, and I’m not a secretive person. How are you reflecting on that decision?
A:
It's funny: You're not a secret keeper. I'm not either, obviously, since I wrote a memoir. I have a tendency to just talk about my life.
But with this, I was very scared, because I had to have a medical exam before starting my job. That is something that they do in France; I'm not even entirely certain what the reasoning is for it. But I thought, ‘Okay, well, if I had to do a medical exam to start this job—and now I am one month into this job, and I find out I have cancer, I can't tell them, because this is going to change everything, and then I might lose my job.’
It was terrifying. I just felt like it was too risky to tell anyone. I didn't even tell that many friends in Paris, either. I just wanted to get treatment done and hope that it would just get it over with and move on and start this new life.
Q:
Your doctor’s appointments in France feel like a series of meetings where they don’t listen to you, and don’t take your suggestions.
A:
I'm in a breast cancer group in France that I found much, much later that a lot of us talked about requesting a double mastectomy, as I did. And all of us were told ‘No.’ Just point blank. Which was so shocking to me. In France, everyone says, ‘C’est impossible.’ [It’s impossible.] And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not going to happen, but it might mean that you have to convince them. I think that the French medical system has a ways to go with listening to women, in particular. That is something actually the U.S. has the leg up on.
Q:
Do you feel like being Black contributed to the way you were treated there?
A:
It was on my mind, and I actually don't think that race played that big of a role in terms of them listening to me. I do think it played a role in my treatment. I write about my doctor not knowing how to cut on black skin, or my radiologist telling me that I'm going to burn. That's very obviously racially based.
I’m in a Facebook group for women of color, Breast Cancer Baddies, and I asked them about radiation and they gave me the solution [after radiation she applied pure aloe vera and Aquaphor on her skin and avoided burning]. The doctor was so shocked that I had a solution and that I didn't burn. Did he never Google himself? I guess not.
But I found out more that it was just me being a woman and me being a single woman and not having something to speak up for me that impacted me.
Q:
Yes, you write so well about looking around the waiting room and noticing everyone’s in a couple. Tell me more about noticing that, and how you felt.
A:
Being single during cancer was not something that I originally thought about. It wasn’t until I went online as well— and everyone was talking about their husbands taking care of them during chemo. I thought, ‘well, must be nice.’
I was more concerned, originally, with being the youngest—but the fact that I was in a country where I had no family—and, on top of that, I didn't have a partner, which everyone else seemed to have—that made it incredibly difficult for me.
I've also learned, looking at some women's stories, that sometimes it's better to have no partner than to have a bad partner. Actually: it's always better to have no partner than a bad partner, because then those are those people who are just causing you more stress.
But it was really difficult. I still really want someone that's going to be there with you in the hard times. I've done it alone.
Q:
Do you think that experience has given you really good tools for evaluating potential partners?
A:
The advice that Hoda Kotb gave me was really eye opening, because I think that she was right: I did reach a better caliber of men having gone through something like that. Because when you present them with something so major that you've gone through, they're either going to split or they're going to stay. And some of them split immediately. Actually, a lot of them split immediately. But the ones that do stick around are much better.
Q:
You write about freezing your eggs after your second cancer diagnosis and encountering a bafflingly biased system there as well. What was your reaction when you first learned that, in France, people’s frozen eggs are discarded when they turn 43?
A:
I was in shock and disbelief. I was definitely hurt, to be honest: I was hurt to be told that at this certain age, part of you is just discarded. It's gone. I was shocked, because I was already going through so much emotionally with the second cancer diagnosis. And I wasn't even entirely certain if I wanted children—but now you've got this societal pressure, in a much bigger way than what I had before. It’s honestly something I still struggle with, because I'm 41 years old now, so I'm coming up on that deadline. And even though I don't want children, I might. So I might pay to have it transferred somewhere else, because I don't want it to always be in the back of my mind like, ‘Oh, what if, what if? Why did I let them toss them out?’
Q:
There are some vivid passages that I loved in the book, about you preparing for your first chemo appointments: you’re putting on makeup, you're wearing your ‘lucky dress,’ and it’s like you’re deciding to feel good. I regret that I really had the opposite attitude to my treatment. Tell me about that attitude that just feels so powerful.
A:
Prior to moving to Paris, I dealt with depression a little bit. I knew I needed to do whatever I had the energy to do to lift my spirit. And, of course, I started therapy almost immediately after I was diagnosed, so that helped as well. But I knew if I looked in the mirror and I liked what I saw, I would say, ‘I can go through this. Like, Look at that hot girl. She can do it.’
It gave me something to look forward to. Because no one is looking forward to getting chemo, but I was looking forward to dressing up and looking good. What am I going to wear? How will I do my makeup? Of course, as things went on and I lost eyebrows and I was drawing on, and I couldn't put on lashes, things got a little strange. I wasn't looking so ‘hot girl’— but I tried my best.
Q:
That's such a great way to describe it. If you look in the mirror, you're like, ‘oh, she’s cute’ it gives a little boost!
A:
When I would go to chemo, the chemo nurses would comment! One in particular, my favorite one, she was like, ‘Oh, I love that wig. ‘Oh, look at that dress.’ I loved it.
Q:
Being with a body that went through cancer, how are you thinking about body image? Where are you with that now?
A:
My body image is an ongoing issue for me, particularly because one of my surgeons botched my natural breasts. To this day, it is still a problem for me. I still have pain every single day in that breast—and just the way that it looks and everything, it's been really difficult. Sometimes I look at myself and I'm like, ‘Oh, you look creepy.’ It's not something that I thought I would still be going through after this many years out. It’s something I'm working on every day.
I miss certain things that I was able to do before, that I feel like I can't do now. And I miss certain things I was able to wear before that I can't now. The thing that keeps me going is the fact that with implants, you have to switch them out every few years. So I'm like, ‘Yes, like, I'm going to get a great person the next time! And I'm really going to really do it up.’
Q:
You write really powerfully about friendship dynamics during cancer. Some of these passages are so heartbreaking. People say wild, awful things. How are you thinking about friendship now?
A:
[People saying terrible things] is just still such a problem—and it's something that I don't want to deal with. I have my boundaries, and you can believe what you want to believe, don't say it to me, because I'm not dealing with that. I don't know if I'm that polite.
People will say, ‘What gave you cancer?’ It’s not helpful. Life is life, things happen to people, and they just happen to us at different points in time in our lives. So I don't think anyone should put themselves on a high horse because they haven't had to deal with cancer like we have.
The main one [I won’t stand for is]: ‘You got cancer because the universe wanted you to learn something.’ I think that is probably the worst thing that someone said to me.
I think generalized anxiety is something that most cancer survivors have in common. I’ve completely changed my life; well, maybe not completely, but the way I’ve tried to really change my life is with stress. I really try not to let anything stress me out. I try to make sure I'm getting rest, because my oncologist said that rest is the most important thing. I make sure I’m taking my tamoxifen, but also rest.
Q:
How do you rid stress from your life— tell me your ways!
A:
Sometimes, when things just get too rough, I just take a nap. I’m like, ‘Okay, that kills two birds with one stone. I reduce stress, get rest.’
I’m a big believer in massages. Mostly, I get massages because I do have mobility issues from all of my procedures, but then also it helps me regulate my nervous system. And I find that if I have something stressful coming up, it's really good for me to get a massage.
I also do meditation. I have my religion as well. So it's prayer, going to church, and community things like that.
Q:
This is a question I’ve liked asking people recently: after your experience, do you feel wiser?
A:
No. [Laughs].
Q:
That’s what everyone is saying!
A:
The main thing along those lines that I think it did was make me stress less and have boundaries. I don't think it made me wiser. I wish it did. I think everything that I've learned and the wiseness that I've acquired is mostly from age. I was 34 when I started all this. Through age and life I've acquired a bit of wisdom.
